


How Many Boards Can You Change

by AmateurScribes



Series: Whumptober 2019 [30]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Loneliness, Mercenaries, Prompt Fic, Recovery, Redemption, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: Samuel Ortez was a SIM Trooper, he wasn't ignorant of this.But that doesn't mean he has to be as stupid as his comrades.





	How Many Boards Can You Change

**Author's Note:**

> _The Question as Follows Is_ (I), _How Many Boards Can You Change_ (II), _???_ (III).
> 
> Second to last for this event and this series! Hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> For the duration of this event, all mistakes are my own.

The other Reds and Blues were idiots, of this Ortez was certain.

He firmly disagreed against their mission to go and find 'Church'- and he blamed that reporter firmly due to her hand in the matter.

It was obvious to him at the very least that it was highly improbable that Epsilon was still alive, there was no logical conclusion that could be made on how it managed to not only survive the final stand for Chorus but also how it managed to get seemingly trapped elsewhere.

He wasn't an expert in artificial intelligence, he had no qualms admitting this. Pride was unbecoming of a soldier- even if he was a SIM.

Ortez was certain that if he voiced his concerns on the matter, the others would follow suit and realize their own stupidity. But they didn't, even outright scolding him for giving up on Church so easily.

Not even Gates had supported him, and he was the closest thing that Ortez could have come to call a friend.

After all their years of friendship, the orange soldier still doubted his judgment. 

That hurt, more than he cared to admit.

He didn't tend to consider himself one for emotional outbursts, he saved that for the other members of his team- Felix with his tenacity to get absorbed too much in his shows and his further when talking about them, Wu with his disgustingly giving amount of concern for people who probably don't deserve it, and Sharkface with his bursts of anger, of which the other man had been working on it.

But Ortez? He was calm, composed and ready for  _ anything. _

Gates had once joked that he probably had a plan for the apocalypse- as if such a thing could ever happen.

How could Ortez be blamed for his strategic mindset? At least  _ one _ person needed to be in their ensemble.

At least, before the Freelancers came along that is. Even then, he figured that they would have the sense to understand his doubts. But Agent Carolina was a lost cause as soon as the message was played, and, of course, Agent Washington typically followed suite.

He wouldn't follow them on their redundant mission, he made that very clear on the day they were all set to go. Perhaps it wasn't right of him to abandon his team like that, but it was a waste of resources, time, and effort.

It wasn't logical and he hated that.

Which left him alone on the moon that they had been staying on.

And that was just fine with Ortez at first, he didn't need much to be satisfied- even preferred the quiet after having to listen to endless babble for years now. Just give him a book or multiple and he'd be satisfied.

But he could only read so many books, and eventually, he'd grown tired of just sitting around and reading. It felt too close to doing nothing, and he needed something stimulating to do.

So he took up improving the two bases- first cleaning them out, because now that he was the only one here he would not be living in filth- and doing all the things he felt that they should have done, but was always shot down by his more 'non-paranoid' comrades.

He fortified it, at first just improving the practically nonexistent security systems, then building barricades around the base, and then adding in traps and pikes to ward off potential combatants, of which there'd be zero. The moon was very secluded after all. He was just doing this to keep himself occupied.

But there'd come a point where he'd make the base a little  _ too _ fortified and not even he would have been able to navigate them without setting something off, so he stopped himself before he could lose control over it.

And that left him with nothing to do  _ again. _ He didn't want to read books, the bases were protected, what else was he to do?

Ortez thought long and hard about what had been his particular skill set that he had contributed to the group before the Freelancers and AI's had made everyone complacent.

He's the one who made plans- of course, hardly any of them were successful- but that's what his role was. Strategist, planner,  _ thinker. _

He looks back on old fights of theirs and thinks about how he could have improved them. What they could have done better, what would have worked faster, things like that.

He starts there, and crafts strategy after strategy. But then he meets the end of their history, and there's no other fight for him to dissect and improve.

Well, there's the one currently going on, but he doesn't know what's going on or who the others are facing.

So he changes his targets and starts planning hypotheticals, and there's no end in sight for him because he can think about disaster after disaster, enemy after enemy- everything.

He eventually does figure out a plan on how to survive an apocalypse. In fact, he has multiple, for every factor, every possibility, every type of world-ending disaster, who he's with, how the world's affected, does technology work, are they being hunted down, is it a natural disaster, is it aliens again, is it a parasite, is it  _ each other- _

Ortez, needless to say, is kept occupied.

He writes these all down, plans them out on the base walls- no one's there to prevent him from doing so- and he gets so absorbed into his spiraling, that he doesn't even notice when someone else gets past his defenses and into the base.

It's when he takes a step back to analyze the connections he's made from certain concepts that his back bumps into somebody else's.

Whirling around, he's surprised to see a very familiar type of armor- Protector class armor, primarily a lighter orange highlights,  _ differences from prior observance are additions of grey and white's making it lighter than the original black- _ and his heart lurches at the sight of the mercenary in the base.

Before he can demand how the other man had gotten past his security, the other man coughs into his fist awkwardly, and gestures to his wall plans, and says, "Should I come back when you're done with, whatever  _ this _ is?"

"How about never?" he growls, lifting his gun to the other man's forehead. "What are you doing here?"

"About that," the mercenary starts, providing the head of Filss. "I found her just floating around in space, and she urgently begged I come get you so, here I am, I guess."

Lowering his gun, he accepted her without question, looking down at the robot, asking, "Filss what happened?"

"In hindsight, Captain Ortez, you may have been right," Filss started. "The others are in quite the predicament, jailed with Father having switched sides."

"Terrance defected?" he asked with surprise. "And you didn't... join him?"

"Reluctantly, I was given an update while we were vacationing here, and I have found myself with confusing and conflicting...  _ emotions," _ she started, sounding hesitant. "Normally, I would follow Father, but..."

And she trailed off, so unlike the normally emotionless and obedient robot that she normally was. 

"Filss?" this was very much unlike her.

"The rest of you are my family too," she spoke, uncertain confidence to her voice. "Father was in the wrong. These Blues and Reds are dangerous."

"I'm sorry, who?" he moves to set her down on the countertop.

"The Blues and Reds, SIM Troopers just the same as you, except they plan on destroying the UNSC," she explained. "Before they sent me off to receive help, our SIMS were cornered, I'm sure that they were captured."

"They killed off an entire planet," and he's jolted with the reminder that the mercenary that he had once fought against was standing in the same room as him. "It was a refugee planet, and they took away the only thing keeping the atmosphere stable."

"And you would know something about that, right?" he doesn't mean to show the malice in his voice, but somehow he does.

"I deserve that," Nero says, and doesn't say anything else- no excuses or further comment on how he's somehow different from these Reds and Blues.

Just that makes Ortez calm slightly, and he figures that there'd be no harm in working with the man.

"What were you doing there?" a part of his brain remembers how the mercenary had run away before the final fight, and he tries his best to forget how his partner had slipped out of Nero's hands when he had tried saving his life. He still didn't know how to process that scene.

"Trying to help," and Ortez knows that he shouldn't be surprised, but he is. "Because I know it may not seem it, but I never wanted to- to be the type of- if it wasn't for Simmons I wouldn't have gotten involved with anything on Chorus. I used to want to be- well- things just hadn't worked out, and then they did when I met Simmons..."

Ortez feels compelled to call him out on the way that his thoughts were turning, but he didn't have to as a sudden clicking sound stopped him mid opening his mouth.

He wasn't sure what had made the sound exactly, but he saw how Nero's fingers bent inward from where his hand was resting at his sides. 

"Right, sorry," the mercenary apologized. "This isn't about me."

"You never struck me as a narcissist," not like Gates who somehow made everything about himself even by the smallest of threads. "Why did you do the clicking?"

"I want to get better," he explained. "I was there to help with the colonist, they were all refugees. Then the Blues and Reds killed them, and I've been trying to locate them ever since. That's how I found your robot."

Stepping towards Ortez, he raised up a hand, and Locus could see the fastened clicker, simple in design and not noticeable unless shown. "I'm done running away. I'm here to help."

He takes in everything that he can about the man. Takes in the possible sincerity of his words.

Nodding his head he says, "We could use all the help possible."

"Good," and now the mercenary raises a hand to rest on the back of his helmet. "Because I've never been the one to plan things. I just- you know."

Looking back at his walls, he thinks of all of the different situations he's planned for, and he walks around looking at the walls.

He stops in front of one of them and feels confident with what they had planned ahead of him.

Ortez has thought through many variations of a Doppelganger disaster.

* * *

His plan works as best as it can go, he regroups with the others, informs them that he's made a plan to get them out of there.

Nero retrieves the Freelancers, they're disorientated and weak from whatever had managed to hold them captive.

Ortez is secretly glad that Sharkface reneged on his previous betrayal, he didn't want to have to fight the other man.

And he's more than relieved when Gates had openly apologized for dismissing his skepticism about the validity of Church's message. And considering the man had swallowed nails- and promptly spat them out- in the past rather than admit when he was wrong, Ortez can tell that he means it. 

And Ortez feels much better about his position on the team, more secure in that they respected him, even if they didn't show it or say it.

The others are just as shocked and distrustful as he was when they saw Nero, but the more reserved man didn't try to force them to trust him. They didn't like it when he used the sword he had claimed from Wombwell to break them out of the cells, and they quickly got annoyed by the sound of occasionally clicking, despite him never saying anything out of line.

He more or less proved it himself when he jumped in front of Wash, shield activated, blocking a bullet that would have otherwise go through the man's neck.

**Author's Note:**

> How's that for changing up this universes' timeline? In all seriousness, the clicker idea came about not wanting this chapter to be from Grif's point of view- so that I could give an insight into the SIM!Merc's for once- but still wanting to show that he hasn't fully gotten better, but he's trying! Also, Lopez and Filss swapped because I wanted a robot to still be a part of the Reds and Blues, and where Sarge goes I make Lopez follow, so that's why there's that development.
> 
> If you'd like to contact me you can find me at either of my Tumblr's: @agent-murica (main) and @amateurscribes (writing)!


End file.
